A viral image circulating on social media baselessly claimed that former Facebook employee Frances Haugen, who turned over troves of internal company documents to the Wall Street Journal, was not a real whistleblower, but a plant set up by Facebook itself.
“Imagine planting your own whistleblower to expose yourself for not censoring enough so you can censor more,” the image said in a text caption, which was overlaid on top of a photo from Haugen’s Oct. 3 interview with CBS News’ “60 Minutes.”
Posts sharing the image received nearly 25,000 interactions on Facebook and Instagram, according to data from CrowdTangle, a social media insights tool.
They were flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.)
Haugen did not respond to requests for comment through email and Twitter.
But PolitiFact found no evidence that Facebook planted Haugen to pretend to speak out as a whistleblower — a claim that Facebook told us was not true.
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Source: There’s no evidence whistleblower Frances Haugen was planted by Facebook | Poynter